Search Results
As population trends shift, where will future workers come from?
Population is a fundamental determinant of a country’s productive capacity. More specifically, labor, along with capital and the efficiency with which the two can be combined (total factor productivity) determine how much a country can produce at any point in time.
Working Paper
From Population Growth to TFP Growth
Using a firm-dynamics model that has been extended to include endogenous growth, we examine how population growth influences total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The most important theoretical result is that the growth rate of surviving old businesses is a "sufficient statistic" to determine the direction and the magnitude of the impact of population growth on TFP growth. Following that, the model is calibrated for Japan and the United States. The main finding of examining balanced growth paths (BGPs) with various rates of population growth is that the effect on TFP growth is sizable. ...
Journal Article
Population Boom: Where are Oklahoma’s newest residents living and working?
The previous edition of the Oklahoma Economist discovered those moving in came mostly from the Western U.S., and the state experienced “brain gain” after losing college graduates to other states for many years. This edition explores where in Oklahoma these new residents moved to and where other residents have moved within the state, as well as the demographics and employment status of those moving in.
Journal Article
Classifying Worker Types in the U.S. Labor Market
Why some worker types have difficulty finding stable jobs can’t easily be explained by demographic characteristics.
Working Paper
The Impact of the Age Distribution on Unemployment: Evidence from US States
Economists have studied the potential effects of shifts in the age distribution on the unemployment rate for more than 50 years. Most of this analysis uses a "shift-share" method, which assumes that the demographic structure has no indirect effects on age-specific unemployment rates. This paper uses state-level data to revisit the influence of the age distribution on unemployment in the United States. We examine demographic effects across the entire age distribution rather than just the youth share of the population — the focus of most previous work — and extend the date range of analysis ...
Working Paper
Some Evidence on Secular Drivers of US Safe Real Rates
We study long-run correlations between safe real interest rates in the United States and over 20 variables that have been hypothesized to influence real rates. The list of variables is motivated by the familiar intertermporal IS equation, by models of aggregate savings and investment, and by reduced form studies. We use annual data, mostly from 1890 to 2016. We find that safe real interest rates are correlated as expected with demographic measures. For example, the long-run correlation with labor force hours growth is positive, which is consistent with overlapping generations models. For ...
Demographic Trends Are Major Factors in Today’s Weak Labor Force Growth
The size of the US labor force declined by 2.3 million people between December 2019 and December 2021, sparking widespread debate about the underlying factors constraining labor supply. Broadly speaking, changes in the overall size of the labor force come from changes in labor force participation rates (LFPRs), changes in the demographic makeup of the population, and changes in the size of the population. Research has documented the role of changes in LFPRs, especially the jump in the number of retired people (Briggs, 2021; Faria e Castro, 2021; and Kaplan et al., 2021) and the drop in the ...
Discussion Paper
Demographic Trends and Growth in Japan and the United States
Japan’s population is shrinking and getting older, with the population falling at a 0.2 percent rate this year and the working-age population (ages 16 to 64) falling at a much faster rate of almost 1.5 percent. In contrast, the U.S. population is rising at a 0.7 percent annual rate and the working-age population is rising at a 0.2 percent rate. So far, supporting the growing share of Japan’s population that is 65 and over has been the substantial increase in the share of working-age women entering the labor force. In contrast, U.S. labor force participation rates have been falling for ...
Report
A unified approach to measuring u*
This paper bridges the gap between two popular approaches to estimating the natural rate of unemployment, u*. The first approach uses detailed labor market indicators, such as labor market flows, cross-sectional data on unemployment and vacancies, or various measures of demographic changes. The second approach, which employs reduced-form models and DSGE models, relies on aggregate price and wage Phillips curve relationships. We combine the key features of these two approaches to estimate the natural rate of unemployment in the United States using both data on labor market flows and a ...
Journal Article
21st Century demographics : Community development and financial service
Remarks by Lautaro Diaz, Deputy Vice President for Community Development, National Council of La Raza, before the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas conference "New Roads and E-Roads: Market Innovations in Community Development," Dallas, August 24, 2001.